‘It Grows Tall and Straight’: Sugar Maple Tree Planted at Town Hall in Memory of Ben Olmstead Sees Its First Spring

It’s been nearly two years since a beloved, longtime New Canaan public works employee died on the job following an accident.

The Ben Olmstead sugar maple tree outside the northern entrance to Town Hall.

Ben Olmstead was known by family, residents, co-workers and friends for his kind and generous spirit and his vast, detailed knowledge of the town’s infrastructure and history.

Killed on July 23, 2014 by a slow-moving motor vehicle while striping the road with spray paint for a sewer hookup to a residence near the corner of routes 123 and 106—Olmstead knew so much about New Canaan that what he could do in a part-time job is now being done by full-time workers.

Ben Olmstead. Contributed photo

He was “a tremendously valuable person,” First Selectman Rob Mallozzi said.

“He was kind and had many relationships with people around town, really an ideal employee,” the first selectman said.

A tree planted last summer just outside the new entrance to Town Hall in memory of Olmstead—weeks after the renovated and expanded municipal building reopened—is in bloom for the first time this month.

Olmstead’s tree, a sugar maple, was chosen specifically to represent aspects of his character, according to Keith Simpson, a local landscape architect and member of the New Canaan Beautification League, which planned about $50,000 of work to the grounds around Town Hall.

More than 100 people attended a moving ceremony where a sugar maple tree planted outside of the Town Hall addition was dedicated to longtime DPW worker Ben Olmstead, a beloved Norwalk man who worked for the town for more than 30 years and died following an accident in July 2014. Credit: Michael Dinan

“I chose a sugar maple because, like Ben, it grows tall and straight,” Simpson said. “The tree is a native New England tree, such as Ben was, and gets very colorful in the fall, as Ben was a very colorful, humorous guy. It also produces maple syrup and Ben just had the sweetest personality.”

Simpson also was quick to note Olmstead’s positive effect on many New Canaan residents.

“He was just an especially nice person,” Simpson recalled. “Everyone was always so excited to see him.”

A plaque dedicating the sugar maple tree at Town Hall to Ben Olmstead. Credit: John Bemis

Mallozzi and Simpson, as well as New Canaan Public Works Department Assistant Director Tiger Mann noted Ben’s incredibly detailed knowledge of the town’s infrastructure.

“He knew the entire town, front and back,” Mann said. “Being a surveyor, he had a photographic memory of it all in his mind. If you asked him about any road, he could tell you the road’s history, the resident’s history, who sold the houses, who bought them. If you had covered a manhole with pavement he could walk out into the street and find it.”